Few members of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York rally in support of Deborah Danner's family as they attend the trial of the NYPD officer who killed her. The lack of attendance​ brings into question the future of the Black Lives Matter movement and its​ message.

Every first Saturday of a month, a group of pro-life protesters and church members of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral head to Planned Parenthood on Mulberry St. to protest abortions. Now pro-choice activists are holding their own counter protests.

After 23 years in the West Village, Babu Fullsink’s cash register at the Hudson Diner will go silent at the end of the month. He decided to close because he was getting older and couldn’t keep up with the physical demands of restaurant work.

In groups of three to five people, HOPE volunteers are assigned a certain amount of blocks to canvass in one of the city’s five boroughs. They spend roughly four hours — from midnight to 4 a.m. — asking everyone they encounter if they have a place to sleep that night.

Six years ago, Aca was an undocumented immigrant working as a busboy at the Trump SoHo Hotel. Today, he has legal status and an associates degree in commercial photography. He is working towards a bachelors in international affairs at Baruch College.

when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state would cover the costs to re-open the statue, eager tourists rushed to lower Manhattan to cross Liberty Island off their list of must-see attractions.

Under the banner of “racial justice,” demonstrators drew connections between the struggles faced by people of color locally in New York City and the actions of the federal government, especially those of the last week.

Ida Burton, 57, or Duchess Down Lo, has been playing roller derby for nearly seven years. Burton yearned for the feeling of playing a team sport and after watching her daughters play sports growing up, Burton found her love in derby.

Using a silk aerial hammock suspended from the ceiling, Aerial Yoga students at Honor Yoga in Jackson, NJ explore new and traditional yoga postures with their body weight either partially or fully supported. Students say that this allows for expanded flexibility, increased range of motion, a lengthened spine, and relaxed nervous system while also building strength.

Since Trump was inaugurated, 11 days ago, performance artists Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner have asked members of the public to stand in front of the text and chant, ‘he will not divide us,’ for as long as they wish. A mounted camera, located just below the text, livestreams the activity at hewillnotdivide.us

As the crowds walked onto the Washington Monument lawn, one of the giant screen viewing areas, small groups of people began to chant “Trump, Trump, Trump!” But protestors came to watch the swearing in of the controversial 45th president too.

In the basement of Judson Memorial Church, in Greenwich Village, women from all of New York City’s five boroughs gathered to participate in the Muslim Community Network’s Self defense class. They come together to fight back against a hostile political climate.

Thousands of New York families marched from Trump Tower at Central Park West toward Central Park East and down 5th Avenue as a sign of solidarity with immigrant communities facing mass deportation under a Trump Administration.

Jeffrey Almonte is a 20-year-old Harlem native and content creator. Almonte's video, where he breaks down displacement in Harlem through his critique of an INSIDER Food video on Harlem and the iconic chopped cheese sandwich, went viral.

After Donald Trump threatened to prosecute his opponent and Hillary Clinton seized on a vulgar taped conversation Trump had to make her case against him during the second debate, the final debate was bound to get tumultuous.

During the two hours that Rahami was inside the laundromat, the Union County Bomb Squad, Federal Bureau of Investigation and New Jersey State Police were just down the road investigating the backpack full of explosives that police believe Rahami had planted at the Elizabeth Train Station.

The protesters gathered to express anger and frustration toward Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto’s New York visit and to remind the president of the 2nd anniversary of the mass disappearance of 43 students that took place in Iguala, Guerrero.

Despite recent unanimous support from politicians, some think that the wage gap continues to persist because women choose fields that pay less than men, such as early childhood-education and psychology versus STEM fields.

Though traditionally a quieter part of New York City, those exiting the 3rd Avenue - 138 Street subway station were met with the sound of live jazz and cheering as loud as the bright green uniforms worn by volunteers passing out water and bananas to runners.

Park rangers and police officers were turning away people with without identification bands. In addition to Van Briesen Park, Fort Wadsworth itself was accessible only to runners, police officers, and park rangers.

New York City generates more than $15 billion in annual sales—and this makes New York City the largest retail market in the US, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC).

Though the hundreds of individuals that walk into One World Trade Center everyday can likely recall precisely where they were when the towers were hit, for many the tragedy is something to remember, not relive.

The Chinese government imposes tariffs on certain imported goods, so the retail prices are much higher in China than here. Some e students saw the opportunity and buy goods here and sell them to China at a markup.

Shortly after Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for the murder of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, hundreds of protestors gathered in Union Square to voice their anger at the grand jury decision.

The interactive refugee camp map and life-size shelter model gave visitors real experience to look closer at refugees’ life. Photo by Ang Li

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has opened a new exhibition “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter” which showcases how refugees live.

Bringing together architects, artists and designers, the exhibition explores the issue of refugee crisis through three angles, borders, shelters, and camp cities, which provided an opportunity for people to look closer into refugees’ lives.

According to United Nations, 65 million people globally are currently displaced due to conflict and persecution. Among them, 21 million have fled their countries and became refugees. In 2015, almost 24 people per minute were forced to leave their homeland.

Insecurities, constant movement, and endless fear that accompany these refugees are presented as a main theme at the exhibition.

The world map made up of wires, circuit boards and speakers at the right hand side of entrance caught Sowmya Lyes’s eyes immediately when she visited the museum yesterday.. As a student majoring in Design at School of Visual Arts, Lyes thought that the map showcased the refugee crisis as a global concern and the wires effectively depicted how entangled, trapped refugees are..

An actual model of refugee camp sponsored by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) was also on display.

“I feel related to those people when seeing this life size refugee shelter as in how difficult it would be to manage a family in such a small space and with such limited resources,” said Deval Mistry, of India. “We can empathize with them about the state they are in right now.”

Andrea Nogales, 34, an elementary school teacher, was impressed with the background sound on site. To simulate the real condition of refugees, the exhibition was surrounded with a harsh, continuous sound similar to civil air defense alarm that refugees have to hear over and over again every day.

“The siren makes you feel like you are on alert all the time and resonate with refugees on one of the reasons why they left their original homes,” Nogales said.

Another eye-opening element is the large refugee camp map projected on the floor. After realizing the impossibility of making a conventional map of an actual refugee camp in Northern Iraq, artists spent a year working on the camp and documenting the spaces. They also built an interactive display that allows visitors to virtually walk through and even enter into the camp with narratives unfolding in front of them. By utilizing multimedia techniques, this pathway is able to tell a personalized story vividly about each refugee to visitors.

“We intend to tell people not only living conditions of these refugees, but also that there is a life for them,” said Sean Anderson, associate curator of MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design.

Sean Anderson, associate curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA, is standing in front of the eye-catching and creative map representing the global refugee crisis. Photo by ANG LI.

Refugees don’t know how long they’ll be in a camp. The average length of is 17 years.

“They have a strong belief that they’ll go home one day,” he said. “But if you look at the two images here: one is the world’s largest refugee camp in Northern Kenya, Dadaab, and the other is their destroyed homeland back in Syria last year. Which one looks more like a ‘home’?”

The exhibit also dealt with their education. Over half of the world’s forcibly displaced population is children, making education a key concern in refugee shelters. The tools like School-in-a-Box, distributed by UNICEF and UNHCR, contains materials to set up a makeshift school for up to 80 students.

School-in-a-Box, provided by UNICEF and UNHCR, contains materials to set up a makeshift school for up to 80 students. Photo by Ang Li

“As a teacher myself, School-in-a-Box is appealing to me,” Nogales said. “It seemed awesome that we were able to at least provide the refugee camps with the tools they need to have some education as they continue to struggle through their day-to-day life.”

The refugee camp map also showed clear classification in different sections based on which place they were originally from.

“They have made it their home,” Mistry said, “They do follow their own lifestyle that they used to back home. They have given in that it is their new home, but the hope is still there.”

Lathan Dennis-Singh, an aerospace engineer from Fairfax, Virginia, is one of the subjects in the Sikh: Turban & Identity exhibition in Soho. Photo by Ang Li.

Sikh leaders say they do not have it easy. They face bigotry and many other forms of discrimination, but the optimism and hope the community shares is on display in the photo exhibition, Sikh: Turban & Identity.

Presented by the Sikh Coalition, whose mission is to fight bigotry aimed at this South Asian religion. The Soho pop-up exhibit features 40 men and women in turbans and was photographed by British photographers, Amit and Naroop.

One of the photography subjects, Raghuvinder Singh, was born in India and has lived in New Jersey for the last decade with his wife and two children. In the photo, his smile is of pure happiness. But his life was not as joyful as he looks in the photo. Four years ago, a gunman walked into the Sikh Gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six Sikhs and injuring several including Raghuvinder’s father, Baba Punjab Singh, who was left paralyzed and unable to speak. He e can only communicate by blinking.

Lathan Dennis-Singh, aerospace engineer of Fairfax, Virginia, was also photographed for the exhibit, He became homeless at 13 and came to the United States in 1967 on a scholarship to study at the University of Michigan. It is at college where he became involved with and finally adopted Sikhism. He faced discrimination at the workplace.

“There was no group like the Sikh Coalition that could come forward and stand for me,” he said. “Today, it’s a little bit different. There are more laws to protect the victims of Sikh discrimination, bullying, and hate crimes. This is why the exhibition is so important. It can reach the wider society.”

With a spirit of Chardi Kala (eternal optimism) in mind, he believed that the power of love, the kindness to help others, and public awareness could eventually combat the hate Sikhs were facing.

Growing up in a small town of North Carolina, Jagmeet Singh, now the Media and Communications Manager at the Sikh Coalition, said that he had experienced bullying as a child because of his long hair, turban and beard.

He joined the Sikh Coalition last year and has been using his communication and media skills to work for Sikhs’ civil rights.

“Besides legal aid that we provide for Sikh individuals experiencing harassment, discrimination, and violence, we also help to change policies so that there is less systematic discrimination,” he said. “We work to educate the public about Sikhism. We are also trying to track where the violence against Sikhs is happening. Soft discrimination is also included, like you walk down the street, and someone calls you a terrorist. But that’s much harder to track.”

Satjeet Kaur, the development and communications director for the Sikh Colaition believes education is the key to resolve their problems. The public should not only be told what the Sikh faith is, but also be able to find similarities over differences and to have a positive association through story sharing.

“When you see the turban and beard, there’s nothing to fear,” said Kaur. “Our vision is that when you walk through this photo exhibition, you can connect with people on a very basic human level. Instead of just seeing an image of person with turban and beard, I saw somebody that was a survivor; I saw somebody that was resilient; I saw somebody that has the best smile I’ve ever seen. And that’s what we want people to walk away with.”

Artist and journalist Molly Crabapple, left, and activist Larry Siems address an audience of around 120 people at the Brooklyn Book Festival today. The festival, which was held in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, featured around 300 writers of nonfiction, fiction, poetry and comics. Photo by Razi Syed.

As an audience of around 120 people in the dark-paneled mock courtroom of Brooklyn Law School listened Sunday afternoon, graphic artist and writer Molly Crabapple recalled sitting in pretrial hearings for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

“In the Summer of 2013, I got the chance to visit Guantánamo several times to do a series of investigative reports for VICE,” said Crabapple, in a panel discussion titled “Writing the War.” “By the time I visited, there were 150 men remaining of the nearly 800 Muslim men, who were rendered, kidnapped or incarcerated. And the majority of those men were on hunger strike.”

Crabapple was among one of hundreds of authors featured in panel discussions and readings at the Brooklyn Book Festival, which has been held annually since 2006.

This year’s festival ran from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday and featured around 300 writers of nonfiction, fiction, poetry and graphic novels. The day’s events were spread out on 14 stages located at Brooklyn Law School, the Brooklyn Historical Society Auditorium, Congregation Mount Sinai and other spots in the borough.

Panels were held on topics of gender and sex, war, modern love, comics and technology.

Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Anna Willoughby, 23, was at the festival for her first time. Willoughby, who had already attended two panels and was planning on seeing another with popular science writer Carl Zimmer, said she was enjoying the debates the topics provoked.

Crabapple and writer Larry Siems spoke about cultural issues in post-9/11 America and the Global War on Terror. A third author, Brooklyn-based Greg Milner, moderated the discussion.

Crabapple described the restrictions placed on the press at the island prison.

“Guantánamo Bay is one of the most censored places in the world,” Crabapple said. “It is a place where every journalist, every photographer that visits there has to wear a giant sign on their neck, saying, ‘Military escort at all times.’

“All photos that taken in Guantánamo are looked at by a number of military, and they are deleted if they don’t meet their standards of security,” she said. “Even when you see the prisoners, you see them through a one-way mirror, so that they don’t know that you’re there and don’t make any attempt to communicate.”

Instead of trying to work around the censorship she faced, Crabapple said she decided to highlight it and make it part of the story.

“With my sketchbook – because I draw rather than take pictures – I was able to get images that photography couldn’t,” Crabapple said. “So I’m forbidden from drawing faces – how do I handle that? I can draw the man from the side or behind, which conceals the censorship. It hides its existence. Or I can emphasize it.”

Crabapple drew the heads of the guards with blank smiley-face expressions, and the faces of the faces of the prisoners were scribbled out in black.

Siems, whose most recent work book, “Guantánamo Diary,” was an annotated manuscript of prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a native of Mauritania who was rendered to the Caribbean island naval base. Slahi was approved for release in July but remains imprisoned.

“It was forced out by secret litigation in a process that took about seven years,” Siems said, of the manuscript that was eventually edited and published in 2015.

“I cannot begin a panel about writing the war, and asking the question, who gets to tell the story of the U.S.’s recent interventions in the Middle East without noting that I’m sitting here talking about this and not Mohamedou,” Siems said. “I’d say that’s the most graphic illustration we have of the problem – who gets to tell the story?”

Fifteen years after the attacks of 9/11, the sun was shining, the air clear. The spot known as ground zero in the days immediately after 9/11 now serves as the memorial site. There’s a memorial museum, store, kiosks with pamphlets and tour schedules, and memorial pools. The memorial pools are both surrounded by black slabs with the names of those who died cut into their surfaces.

Groups of teenage girls gathered yesterday to take selfies in front of the twin reflecting pools, in the imprint of the Twin Towers. Tourists walk along the site plugged in to guided tours, offered for $39 at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Shoppers pass by with bags filled with mementos from the 9/11 Memorial Museum Store.

It was nothing like 15 years ago.

“It was dusty. Smokey. Ungodly,” Doug Marshall, a firefighter from New Brunswick, N.J who was a first responder . “To imagine, that outside the steel that everyone sees in pictures, there was nothing else. Pulverized. You figure all those office buildings—how many desks, chairs—there was nothing. You couldn’t find anything discernable. It was the craziest thing, the force involved.”

He and his department worked for 10 days straight following the attacks. They set up camp at New York University, with kitchens and tents, a temporary base for them to come back to each night.

Marshall pulled himself away. It was time for him and his fellow firefighters to group together for a photo. As soon as Marshall is gone, a couple takes his place and aims their selfie stick at themselves.

Watch the crowd gathered at the 9/11 memorial site and you will see markers of people in service: t-shirts with the names of the fallen beneath the words, “Never Forget”, badges and pins indicating ranks, ladder numbers, and squads. Men and women in uniform stand in clusters all around the site.

One person in uniform is Matthew Hodges, 18, from Ridgecrest, California. Hodges is in the Navy, and came to New York with several sailors from base.

“We were given the option to go to the 9/11 memorial, on the 15th anniversary. It was a chance to get away from base, so I thought I’d come check it out,” he said. “It’s a cool site, I’m from California so I’ve never been this far east. I was also really young when it happened so I like to look into it, see everything. There’s a lot of emotion down there, so it’s different.”

Hodges described 9/11 with the detachment of someone who never knew it as anything other than a historic event. He was just three years old in 2001.

Hodges said he and the other sailors from his base will spend the day at the site, eating pizza, and took photos.

But about 20 feet from the sailors, an older man in a suit and fireman’s hat stood alone at the reflecting pool reading the names from Ladder 42. He stayed for a quarter of an hour, reached out a hand to touch the bronze piece, then walked away, wiping tears from his eyes.

Barry Byrne, an off-duty firefighter from Phoenix, Arizona, wanted to visit on the anniversary. He stood out from the crowd with his jacket covered in firefighter patches and emblems and an American flag bandana worn on his head.

“America cried and America responded that day. It feels right here,” he said. “And this is a very patriotic place to be right now.”

The name of firefighter, Peter Bielfeld who was killed during the 9/11 attacks. His whose family was at the memorial. Photo by Jennifer Cohen

On the morning of the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks the mourners and tourists made their way to ground zero to remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost.

Many wore shirts to commemorate their loved ones that were killed. Dominic Branda and his family, of Ringwood, New Jersey, wore matching navy blue shirts with the FDNY seal on the front right pocket. On the back of the shirts was a red fire truck and the name Peter Bielfeld, and FDNY Ladder 42 in white.

“My wife’s brother was killed as a fireman in the South Tower,” Branda said referring to the name on his shirt.

Peter Bielfeld, 44, was part of Ladder 42 in the Bronx. At the time the first tower was hit, Bielfeld was at a follow-up doctor’s visit taking care of injuries he sustained in a fire. But no injury was going to hold him back from going to the World Trade Center to help.

“He was in Metro Tech Brooklyn, he was injured and he jumped in a captain’s car and came over the Brooklyn Bridge. Fate put him in Brooklyn at that time,” Branda said of his brother in-law.

And that was the last time anyone saw him.

John Hudnall, from Austin, Texas, came to visit the memorial with a friend. They can remember exactly where and what they were doing 15 years ago. They wanted to visit the memorial to pay tribute to the victims. Although our country has made strides against terrorism, Hudnall still believes another attack is imminent.

“I travel weekly for work, and I fly, and it terrifies my wife everyday, every time I’m on a plane or waiting to get on a plane”, said Hudnall.

He said he has the same fears as his wife.

David Sears, from upstate New York, was standing near the corner of Broadway and Vesey waving a small American flag. He wore an American flag on his t-shirt and a bright red hat with the letters USA written across the front. He watched as the friends and family of the victims of 9/11 entered the memorial at 8:30am. He came to the memorial first thing in the morning because as a patriotic man and a New Yorker, he felt it was his duty.

He remembered he prayed on 9/11.

David Sears standing outside the 9/11 memorial waving his American flag. Photo by Jennifer Cohen

“I got with my family and prayed that we would get through the day ok and all of our fellow Americans would get through the day ok.”

Sears believes today is completely different from what it was like in 2001.
Anybody who has the slightest thought of being a terrorist is thrown in jail,” he said. “Back then everything was just so free and open.”

Sears worries about the possibility of an attack happening again.

“Unfortunately, history dictates that we do get complacent after a while you know but, hopefully in my lifetime we will never see anything like this again,” said Sears.

For many brides-to-be, finding the perfect wedding dress can be daunting. So it’s nothing short of jovial, with a matching sigh of relief, when they finally find “The Gown.”

In the case of Aliya Chandia-Lakhani, she felt triumphant when she found multiple wedding outfits while on tour in New York City

It was quite a fashion fairy tale for the Dubai-based corporate executive. She just got engaged and when she came to the city, she found herself in a shopping tour organized by Karen Parker O’Brien, the president of Style Room NYC Shopping Tour Experiences.

“At that time, I really had no intention of buying a wedding gown,” said Chandia-Lakhani. “But during the shopping tour, Karen introduced me to this wonderful dress designer who had the most beautiful evening and wedding gowns. We just bought clothes on the spot!”

And in fashion, that’s one sweet story that retail therapies are made of, as Parker O’Brien can attest to.

As a New Yorker and having been in an industry insider for more than 20 years, Parker O’Brien knows how vital fashion is to NYC’s business system.

Shopping and tourism, as O’Brien put it, help drive the city’s economy. Her idea of organizing shopping tours seemed like a feasible business idea.

“Shopping tours have been around since I was a child,” said O’Brien. “So when I entertained the idea of professionally doing one myself four years ago, I decided to make it more customized, where I would take people to all these private designer showrooms and where it’s more intimate and fun to shop. When I talked to some people about it, they wanted to do it and after a week, I organized my very first tour and it just took off from there.”

Fashion’s ephemeral nature makes it a tricky industry, especially for designers who have to tread the thin line between personal creativity and what customers and retailers actually need and want. But a constant theme in this business is how lucrative it is.

Globally, fashion is worth US$1.2 trillion , and NYC is considered as one of its major capitals, along with London, Milan, and Paris.

From a business perspective, the city’s fashion subculture alone is responsible for employing more than 180,000 people, or 6 percent of the city’s overall workforce, with tax revenues accounting to US$2 billion. Latest statistics reveal that there are around 900 international fashion companies are based here, and NYC is also the home to more than 75 trade shows and thousands of showrooms, both from established and emerging fashion designers.

“New York City is like the center of the world,” said O’Brien. “And when people come here to visit, they shop.”

Now, imagine what tourists—excluding locals and expats—can do to every cash register placed throughout NYC.

Last year, the office of incumbent mayor Bill de Blasio announced that NYC reached an “all-time record” of accommodating 56.4 million visitors in 2014, translating into an overall economic impact of US$61.3 billion.

“I think people are drawn to New York City because it’s an exciting place,” said Jim Dykes, a friend of O’Brien’s and the president of his own tour company, Abuzz Around New York. “Today, tourists are more knowledgeable on what they want to see—and experience—in this city.”

The thriving tourism industry has a more parallel relationship now with fashion and style. Shopping tours like Style Room are pivotal in nurturing this symbiotic partnership.

“Visitors in New York City still like to eat and shop,” said Dykes. “They say that there are a lot of unique spots in this city that are not available elsewhere. Thanks to the internet, for example, more people have become more aware that New York City is a big fashion capital—but knowing who to call for the right places to visit is another thing, and that’s what Karen does for her clients.”

So how does it work? For O’Brien, it’s all about a sense of mystery, if only to pique a visitor’s otherwise info-overloaded mindset.

For starters, O’Brien doesn’t advertise the designers and brands that she works with. Instead, she gets to know her prospective clients beforehand first, like what they usually wear and how they build their wardrobe based on their size and lifestyle. She then tailors a tour plan for them, which involves deciding which designers can cater to them best. Her clients only discover who they’re going to visit—and shop from—on the tour day itself.

This system, as O’Brien explained, also protects the designers’ privacy, mostly because they also have separate arrangements with other mainstream retailers that can’t be publicly disclosed—and so far, tourists have been okay with the setup.

“I’ve had clients who ask me if we’ll go to somewhere like Chanel or Prada,” she said. “My answer is no, because I take them to American designers who are based here in New York City and I think they like it because they get access to unique, good quality merchandise and have bragging rights like, ‘Hey, I got this from a New York City designer!’”

“It’s been really fun bringing visitors and letting them interact with the designers I work with,” she said. “Of course, they’re talking about fashion but the next thing you know, they’ll be asking them for recommendations on where to dine out as well or what other activities to do in the city, too. It makes the whole experience more personal and they [tourists] get to fall in love with the city more.”

This story was written by Eugene Y. Santos and reported by Taisha Henry, Alexandra Zuccaro, Karis Rogerson and Eugene Y. Santos.

New Yorkers came out for the home team yesterday, launching Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to big victories over their rivals.

Business tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump trounced John Kasich and Ted Cruz with 60 percent of the votes. John Kasich was in second place at 25 percent and Ted Cruz, a very distant third, was sunk by his derogatory comments about “New York values,” which led to a series of blistering attacks throughout his NY campaign.

Hillary Clinton put an end to Bernie Sanders’s seven-state winning streak by beating the Vermont senator by double digits, 58 percent to Sanders’ 42 percent. Although Sanders was born in New York and held large public events in the state, Clinton served the state as senator and lives in Chappaqua, New York. Clinton has done well in states with large minority populations, while Sanders has been victorious in overwhelmingly white states.

At the polls yesterday, New Yorkers had a chance to be heard through their votes.

Julie Ferri, a Democrat who voted at the Ingersoll Community Center in Brooklyn, said she supports candidates that advocate progressive thinking, and that was best illustrated by both Sanders and Clinton.

“I really like how the Democratic party is pushing immigration reforms, improvement of wages and education, LGBT freedom, women’s rights—pretty much everything,” said Ferri.

But voters Sharon Wexler and Ebony Hunter were more vocal about supporting Clinton.

“This might be the best year for her,” added Hunter. “I hope she gets ahead of everybody. She has the best interests for us at this time and I feel she’ll do a good job in helping stop war engagements, because right now, a lot of Americans are losing their family members [because of war conflicts] and it’s not getting any better from what I observed. I think if people give Hillary a shot at presidency, we’ll have a better chance in life.”

Ebony Hunter is excited about the possibility of seeing Hillary Clinton as the first female US president. She believes that Clinton has best interests for Americans. Photo by Alexandra Zuccaro.

Meanwhile, Republican voter Anthony Lopez understands that Trump’s statements often go too far, but he still cast his vote for Trump at the Times Square Hotel polling station.

“I know that presidents in general can’t do everything they say they are going to do, but in this case, I think what matters more is the general direction and leadership style that the future US president will pursue and take,” said Lopez. “That’s why I voted for Trump, for his leadership experience. It would be interesting to see what happens.”

Anthony Lopez believes that Donald Trump’s leadership skills can be good for the US. Photo by Taisha Henry.

Although for some, settling and managing corporate matters is an entirely different story from being president.

“Trump really reminds me of a spoiled 5-year-old, like when you see an undisciplined child who just blurts out what s/he wants to say without thinking about it,” said Kaye Copes, a nurse who lives in Harlem. “He’s into dividing people and I don’t like that. We (the US) have come so far that we don’t need to deal with that.”

At the end of the day, despite differing political beliefs and the voting irregularity in Brooklyn, a lot of New Yorkers share the same hope of seeing a wiser and more economically sound country.

“I just hope that the next US president will be able to lessen the gap between the rich and the poor,” said Sonia Allen, a middle school director living in Harlem. “It might help if s/he will focus on youth empowerment and education. They (young Americans) are our future.”

Next stop for the candidates is yet another “Super Tuesday” on April 26, with more east coast states holding primaries. Those states, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island should continue the Trump and Clinton’s march to the nomination experts said.